With the sound of graduation preparations filling the air, replacing the pressures associated with the winding down of any school year, it seemed fitting to write about how the ending of one of life’s chapters sets the stage for the next to begin. That is, of course, until the last page of our personal diary spells out ‘The End’. Yet even then, life carries on with a new season: same location, but all new cast.
With each generation comes near endless possibilities, while the older of each generation often sits shaking its collective head of uncertainty at the hands the world soon be resting within. The older ones always had a tougher row to hoe while the younger ones are certain that their elders simply “didn’t understand.”
We are a consistent species, and as each generation simultaneously meets, adapts to, and creates change, we put in motion the situations that often allow for each generation to be correct in its observations of the other.
In our youth, we struggle, working hard to make a way for ourselves that is beset on multiple fronts by adversity. Achieving something better is never easy, and most rows — especially where one does not exist — are tough ones to hoe. It is true of every generation, and if we are successful, the ones will follow will have it a little easier.
Let the head shaking begin. Yet while might be true that each generation makes life more comfortable for the next, it is equally true that too often, elders don’t understand. We too often forget that improved comfort and convenience do not occur in the absence of adversity.
Adversity is dead certain, even as the fabric of the world becomes increasingly stitched together with fiber-optic cables and wrapped in a broadband blanket. As our technology continues to accelerate exponentially with the readout approaching light speed, one can’t help but ponder whether the further will be like Star Trek or the Terminator.
In a Star Trek future, humanity has substituted the pursuit of wealth for the pursuit of maximum potential in oneself.
They harnessed their technology to create food replicators that ended hunger and developed ways of exploring strange new worlds.
In ‘The Terminator’, humanity outsources critical thinking skills to artificial intelligence, that once became self-aware decided humanity was more trouble than it was worth. AI technology created cyborgs called ‘Terminators’ that systematically hunted down and exterminated human life, even attempting to restitch the fabric of time in the effort to do so.
Elders shake their heads with increasing frustration, while the eyes of the youth seem to only rarely look up from their electronic communication devices to notice, making one wonder if conversation will eventually become a thing of the past. I discovered this week, there is little to fear, as every interview associated with the stories of graduating valedictorians was conducted through text.
While “the kids today” might abridge their face-to-face meetings to little more than one or two-word responses, put a two-inch digital keyboard beneath their thumbs and they’ll craft you a manuscript. It could be that like younger generations past, we simply don’t understand.
As for me, I type as a profession, and by the time I was done with this week’s interviews — where more than 10,000 words were exchanged between us — my thumbs were happy to resume their responsibilities tending to my keyboard’s space bar. And while what would have normally been a 30-minute face-to-face turned into a 26-hour message exchange, I wonder if the information shared would have been as rich and thoughtful.
We appreciate time, patience, and care being taken in so much of what we do, yet we so often treat communicating like a microwavable dish and wonder why it leaves a bad taste in out mouths. So, we older generations might shake our heads at the youthful faces illuminated by LED screens, but we should not be too quick to judge, it might just be we are simply standing in the way of where they boldly want to go.